SLAPP LIKE NOW! Real personality reveal at 9 million subs!

Oh wait, wrong site. I am positive I can finish book number 14 this week, so I will have to up my goal by one for the next year (or, I will up it even more and I will include read magazines as well...)

Aight I can do this

I CAN DO THIS

ima start reading right now.

I am on the verge of finishing The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. I've read other Oliver Sacks stuff before and really enjoy it. Each book is a collection of stories about different patients with neurological issues told in a very engaging way.

Yeah, I read two of those reverse design books, four total.

Still didn't post what I read the last two months so here it is before I start forgetting.

October:

18. Arthur Miller - Death of a Salesman

19. Seamus Heaney - Death of a Naturalist

20. Stephen Hicks - Understanding Postmodernism

21. Bart D. Ehrman - Misquoting Jesus

Bonus 1: George Orwell - Politics and the English Language

Bonus 2: Douglas Murray - Islamophilia

November:

22. Richard Carrier - Sense and Goodness Without God

asdf

Death of a Salesman - Well known play, I don't know what deeper meanings it harbors but I thought it was a banger of a character study.

Death of a Naturalist - Decided I was going to try some poetry earlier this year and I think this is the first collection I've read through. I'd say it was good insofar as I think I "get" poetry now, some scenes are incredibly vivid and conveyed with more fidelity through a poem than they would through prose. Quite a lot of poems in here that I got nothing out of, though.

Also the similar title between those two books was unintentional, I'd never want to imply my reading choices are anything less than completely arbitrary.

Understanding Postmodernism - Decent although a bit simple, this seems to be the popularizer of the theory that postmodernism is/was effectively veiled Marxism, or at least very selectively applied its own principles in favor of Marxist doctrine. This read has gotten more popular in recent years so it wasn't anything new to me, but I enjoyed his run through of identifying where certain ideas began and how they grew over time through multiple thinkers contributing.

Misquoting Jesus - Biblical Bart back at it again. This one follows the history of the gospels, how they were continually edited, re-edited, rewritten, re-translated etc. into the eventually massive, incoherent, contradictory compiled volumes we have today. Thoroughly obliterates any notion of the new testament being historically reliable documents. Very good read if you have any interest in bliblical history at all.

Politics and the English Language - EXCELLENT Orwell essay, read it several times and will probably read again. Would highly recommend especially if you have any interest in writing, as this is largely a guide on how to write clearly with observations of how language is warping to become more vague and more ugly. It's very much like a higher brow version of that one Carlin bit (actually it's so close I have to wonder if Carlin had read this essay), along with tips on how to avoid this degradation of language. I was also blown away to read Orwell claim that the word 'fascist' is so over-used that it's become meaningless, besides describing something you don't like... did I mention he wrote this in 1946?

Islamophilia - This is originally from 2013 and got reprinted following Murray's big success with The Madness of Crowds, which I read earlier this year. The writing in this is much rougher and his arguments a bit shakier, but the humor is intact and it nearly comes off like an acerbic comedy routine. It doesn't actually criticize Islam at all, the target is instead on a series of notable figures who've exhibited a bizarre, uncharacteristic reverence for Islam that they wouldn't afford any other faith, all of which becomes an obvious act with a little examination.

When reading this I was reminded how much of an issue Islam in europe was just a few years ago and was thinking to myself how it's all seemingly calmed down and might be fine after all. Then the recent attacks in France flared up, literally right after I finished the book.

Sense and Goodness Without God - A semi-biography laying out the worldview of metaphysical naturalism and how the author came to believe in and expand upon it, largely argues for why naturalism can make objective moral judgements. I wasn't wholly convinced but a decent read anyway.

Hell yeah, I should do the same. I hit my goal but it's been months since I set aside a solid block of time to just read.

I've had this one on my shelf for years. Might crack it open one of these wintery nights.

God damn it. Well you can look forward to a bonus point next month, str8 outta Santa's sleigh.

49: Up From Slavery by Booker T Washington

autobiography by Booker T Washington who was born a slave in the south and was like 9 or 10 when the civil war ended and he was freed. This was his 2nd autobiography I think. Published in 1901 or so so a good 30 or so years after slavery was abolished. He started a school for African Americans in the south and was a major figure at the time. He toured Europe and met presidents. It was almost depressing reading how optimistic he saw the future for race relations. He clearly thought the jim crowe era was going to be a blip and not a sustained systemic suppression of blacks in america. Of course he came of age just after the civil war during Reconstruction and met black members of congress and governors of southern states. I wonder how he would have written if he lived longer than 59 years. Very well written and a breeze to read. He and his writing partners (I believe most of the book was originally edited and published in newspapers) focused on brevity and ease of understanding. He avoids the convoluted and pompous styles of other biographies of important people of the time.

Most likely the last book of the year for me. Finished reading "Axiom's End" by Lindsay Ellis.

Lindsay Ellis' (some might remember her as "The Nostalgia Chick" from Channel Awesome) debut novel. I guess it can be best described as: "Transformers, but without Michael Bay's horrendous directing". It's a pretty good read. Only about 300 pages on not very narrowly printed pages, so it's not a strain on the eyes like some novels I have read (with like 10,000 words per page on very tiny book pages).

Since it's a very new book I don't want to get into the story too much, because of possible spoilers. So I just keep it really short:

I liked how the book handled the "First Contact" and the difficulty with communicating with an extraterrestrial life form, which is nothing like humans. Cora, the main character, often has trouble interpretating the body language of the aliens, and can't quite get over the fact that they don't really have what we could call faces, so there's not facial expressions to read, either.

What I didn't like was that for about 3/4 of the book, Cora is described at more or less being overly exhausted and at the end of her physical and psychological strength. Ellis didn't really find a way to describe her main character winding down and catching a breath in between the action scenes. Cora is more or less on her last legs throughout the entire book.

Anyway, solid 5/7, would buy again! (actually, I didn't buy this at all, it was a gift)

By chance discovered this "reading insights" section of the kindle app which keeps a streak counter. Apparently I've read something at least once a week for 64 weeks in a row, if I drop it at this point presumably the device will explode.

I am amazed by Ellis' career considering I only knew her as a side character to Doug Walkers cringy skits. Out of everyone from Channel Awesome im surprised that she was the one to just rise up as the most successful out of all of them (but I guess to be fair Channel Awesome is full of dimwits)

I'll give that book a try in the future

been dead for a while

think i last posted about this #13 A Court of Wings and Ruin

i read some more YA random shit post that

#14 Red Queen

first in a series about another poor girl who ends up in a high class family and forbidden love yada yada yada. didn't bother with the next book in the series

then i thought i'd read something not YA to balance out my palate

#15 Of Mice and Men

i really loved east of eden when i was it last year. steinbeck writers characters in a way that makes them seem extremely intricate and then somewhat relatable as if he is putting a bit of himself into them. i liked it a lot

then i just read the raven boys series

#16 The Raven Boys

#17 The Dream Thieves

#18 Blue Lily, Lily Blue

#19 The Raven King

i really loved this series, especially book two. i think it's probably my favourite YA fiction series i've read. the setting is extremely unique it kind of reminded me of a tiny bit thematically of LOST (the tv show) because it set ups certain seemingly spooky/supernatural things and you always have this foreboding sense of fear. the characters are extremely well written and it's one of those book series that i ended feeling kind of sad that i won't spend time with those characters again

at the moment i'm trying to read Norwegian Wood but i've kind of fallen out of love with reading like i just can't seem to find time for it

i doubt i will finish 24 books at this rate unless i cram short stories in at the end like a buster lmao

I read it earlier this year and my feelings are pretty close to yours. A strong debut with some minor critiques but still enjoyable. I find I am forgiving to works that are do something new and different and i felt like Axioms End is a great example of that - not your typical first contact story and the aliens are novel from the stereotypical sci fi novel

I share a kindle account with the wife and even though I have been on a real tear this year she is a voracious reader who will be reading 1 or 2 novels on her kindle and have a couple of different audio books - she treats them like regular folk treat TV shows. Watch an episode of Simpsons, then an episode of Brooklyn 99, then an episode of How To Get Away With Murder....you know not all one thing. I read my books and listen to the audio version of each to completion then start on my next one.

She also reads just a whole lot of romance. It is...it is a lot. @SantaSeven would blush at her kindle reading list. I had to scroll pretty hard to get to a SFW-ish screen shot

Here is my review of one of my favorite novels, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

American Psycho The fourth novel in Bret Easton Ellis's trilogy of darkly funny yet macabre novels set in early nineties Manhattan, American Psycho explores the extremely destructive relationship between Patrick Bateman, a narcissist, immature sociopath, and sex addict, and Mary Jane Paul, a naive, young, beautiful, "rich girl."

He helps her meet her wealthy boyfriend, Frank, before coming to an untimely end of his own.

American Psycho follows Patrick Bateman as he rises from humble

Some of that --- the romance--- looks like fantasy though, and I enjoy the fantasy genre.

LOTR but with banging?

Hell yes.

she's got smutty sci fi, smutty fantasy, smutty anime, smutty mystery. My library is so much smut. Like I said I had to scroll all the way to a section with a few of my books so the screenshot wouldn't be all smut

But if those short stories turned out to be really good, and you wouldn't have read them otherwise, you might end up bustering to victory with no ragerts.

I think you might be more central to the amazon smut-gauntlet demographic than you realize.

true say, i read the death of ivan ilyich this time last year actually and i really liked that. do you have any short story recs?

oh boy yeah, my ADD brain happens to be an expert on the subject. Many of these will have PDFs easily attainable thru google.

Super short (~10 pages or less):

Isaac Asimov - The Last Question

Kurt Vonnegut - Harrison Bergeron 

Peter Watts - The Things (the John Carpenter film retold from the alien's perspective)

Harlan Ellison - I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

Shirley Jackson - The Lottery 

Ursula K. Le Guin - The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 

Haruki Murakami - The Birthday Girl 

Andy Weir - The Egg

A bit beefier (like 50 pages):

Harlan Ellison - A Boy and His Dog

Yukio Mishima - Patriotism 

Algernon Blackwood - The Willows 

Jean Giono - The Man Who Planted Trees

Short novels:

Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea (90ish)

Scott Adams - God's Debris (120ish)

Stephen King - The Mist (140ish)

Yukio Mishima - The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea (170ish)

Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane (180ish)

Osamu Dazai - No Longer Human (170ish)

John Steinbeck - The Pearl (90ish)

Non fiction:

Sam Harris - Lying (60ish)

Sam Harris - Free Will (80ish)

Steven Pressfield - The War of Art (180ish but comprised of short aphorisms)

George Orwell - Politics and the English Language (32, mentioned this in my last summary post)

Thanks for the billion notifications @Titilonic, hope you're enjoying your odyssey through the thread.

Sorry about that, I usually avoid looking at big threads due to my reactive-nature but got curious. Found some pretty interesting books too, thanks everyone.

i will crack through this list when i break from work for xmas s00n. i will have hopefully finally finished norwegian wood by then. they all seem like a good sweet spot in length because i find that if something is quite short, it's weirdly unappealing because it seems like it will be over by the time you get into it. if it's too long like 200+ pages, i throw it in my ever expanding to-do list and then never actually get round to it in any meaningful amount of time

Yukio Mishima - The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea - i like name of this 1 so i go put it on my dope kindle asap so i have no excuse

the thing that's really eaten into my reading time (of books) is that i subscribed to the athletic as part of their £1 a month promo and i can't get enough. i usually read while laying in bed and i just trawl though sports articles atm instead

also this lmao. i was confused for a second and thought the notification system was bugged out

50: Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos

50 gorram books in a year. Something I would have never expected just a few years ago.

Something I found in kindle unlimited library and the whole series is on it. It's like a mix of Old Man's War, Forever War, Starship Troopers, and Blackhawk Down. It wasn't that long of a read but it changed gears so many times I wasn't sure when it would end. As soon as you get comfortable with one setting the author throws another twist in and pivots to a whole new setting. It could have been stretched into 3 different books but Kloos gets through it in under 400 pages without feeling overly drawn out or, surprisingly, too fast paced. All and all worth the price of admission. The audio book narrator also sounds vaguely like Nathan Fillion.

51: lines of Departure by Marko Kloos book 2 went by much faster and had a more coherent story line.

just knocked this one out. Supposed to be a short read, but I would only sometimes pick away at it for less than 15 minutes during my break at work. Some positive attitude mentally healthy framework kinda stuff, most of it I already did or felt like I already know, but some other observations are charming and easily digestible. Would recommend for a charming, nice read especially if you're an anxious, nervous, or angry mess.

29) Have read through 90-something posts on my blog to correct errors and spacing. In addition to this, several other online articles on APIs and team building in Hero Wars

30) Final Notice >> Still reading but will update when done.

Done reading these books:

104. Harry Potter und der Gefangene von Askaban (Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban), J. K. Rowling, 448 pages

105. Planet der Affen (Planet of the Apes), Pierre Boulle, 272 pages

106. Traumlieder Band 1 (Dreamsongs Volume 1), George R. R. Martin, 544 pages

107. Das Geräusch einer Schnecke beim Essen (The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating), Elisabeth Tova Bailey, 176 pages

Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban:

Third book in the series. Very good, also has in my opinion the best movie adaption out of the Harry Potter books.

Planet of the Apes:

Plays in 2500. A group of three men, among them journalist Ulysse Mérou and Professor Antelle, travel in a spaceship to a planet that is very similiar to planet earth. After landing there, they soon find human beings - only that those show no signs of intelligence at all. Chaos breaks out soon after when clothed Gorillas armed with guns hunt the humans. Ulysse Mérou ends up being captured and experimented on. He desperately tries to prove that he is different from the planets human beings and capable of critical thought. He succeeds at this but soon after the apes find evidence that they weren't always the leading species ...

Good book. Reads a bit like a Jules Verne book, especially in the beginning.

Dreamsongs Volume 1:

Collection of short stories and novellas by George R. R. Martin, accompanied by the author talking about how his writing career started, his passion for comics and winning his first awards, etc.

Great book. Was really impressed by the stories being great, would recommend checking this out. Will definitely read the other two volumes as well.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.

The author of this book suffered from a (at the point when it happened) mysterious ilness that rendered her bedridden for years. In one of these years a friend of hers brought a snail with her, which then became her pet and a source of entertainment and hope. She describes in detail her observations of the snail and what she learned from academic texts about snails, etc while slowly becoming more healthy.

Good book. Especially the later parts go heavy with the snail facts compared to the overall story but I found those interesting.

I have also played through Robotic;Notes Elite like I mentioned earlier, great visual novel. Cyberpunk seems to be kind of a bust so that's not gonna happen anytime soon. Still likely the last batch of books for this year.

20 Norwegian Wood i really, really, really liked this book. though it's hard to say why without spoiling it but a+++

now i will power through some short stories so i can say i met my goal

i loved this book and film. i completely agree with you about the film being the best adaption and i think the book is the best in the series as well. i love it because it's relatively self contained and the story doesn't bleed out at the end. it rides the line perfectly thematically between its whimisical magical parts and its quite dark parts

Only thing I don't like about the film is how for some reason robes etc. went out of fashion for that one year so everyone wears hoodies and shit. I also prefer the warm, cozy tone the castle in the first two films has over the increasingly cold and grimdark one (they literally shot it in a different castle for the first two) as the series goes on, it's a big shift from 2 to 3.

Also the fact we're expected to believe this thing is less spooky than a snake:

It goes without saying that while the time turner works in the context of this one it makes no sense in the broader series, it's too useful a device and could apply to too many scenarios. That's the biggest example but Harry Potter is covered with stuff like that and it's my main issue with JK's writing, she'll introduce something and seemingly not even remotely think through the logical ramifications of this thing existing.

Always thought if the HP universe was lent out to other authors more willing to think about this stuff, that's when you'd get something really interesting. Like a short story collection in that universe but each story is by a different established writer, stick Neil Gaiman and Patrick Rothfuss in there and see what happens.

52: Angles of Attack by Marko Kloos

Just trucking through this series because the ebook and audiobook are available on whatever Kindle subscription I've got. That's not entirely true, the writing is engaging and the characters get better as the series progresses. Definitely has that Forever War/Old Man's War feeling to it still and that's a good thing.

With this book I've averaged 1 book for every week of the year.